Arsonist's Lullaby
by DauntlessVolunteer
Summary: "Tris, my mind involuntarily thinks. It always goes back to her. I think about what I just saw. In two years my fear landscape hasn't changed…until now." After Tobias fights Marcus in Candor, he goes back to his fear landscape. One-shot.
**Hello everyone! So this is my first fanfiction that I have written in years, but I'm very excited to get back into it! So this will be in the perspective of Tobias, its just his inner thoughts around the time when he beat up Marcus in Insurgent and went back into his fear landscape. Based off of the song Arsonist's Lullaby by Hozier. So enjoy!**

 _When I was a child, I heard voices...some would sing and some would scream._

I open my eyes quickly, taking in my surroundings. My panic dissipating once I realize I beat the simulation. I can feel the wetness on my cheeks from where I cried. My throat dry and scratchy from screaming. In the back of my mind, I know I will never conquer this fear, but it's the masochistic thoughts that keep me coming back. I deserve the pain, for all the things I have done. I hurt people, and I take pleasure out of it. _Just like him…_ I think in the back of my mind. I am though aren't I, we are one in the same, me and him. We both hurt people, hurt the people we are supposed to love.

 _Tris,_ my mind involuntarily thinks. It always goes back to her. I think about what I just saw. In two years my fear landscape hasn't changed…until now.

I thought, after beating up Marcus in the Candor cafeteria my fears would change, and oh did they. I still have the usual fear, heights, but there are two new ones. Fears that will never go away.

I always feared I would turn into a monster, I tried my hardest to never be him, but now I am. The memories flood back. Me lying on my side in my small, Abnegation bed. My back, stinging, fresh with new marks. The voice in my head, screaming at the pain, but I had to ignore it, for my sake, so Marcus couldn't hear. I knew that once the tears would start I wouldn't be powerless in stopping them.

When I made my choice, I was no longer Tobias, the boy beaten by his father…the coward, but someone else, I just didn't know who.

 _You soon find you have few choices...I learned the voices die with me._

I always told myself that I wouldn't become him, that I never could become him. But I keep finding myself slipping. I may have the Amity symbol marked on my skin, but I am far from it. I always struggled with kindness.

Another memory surfaces, it feels so long ago, but it was only about a week prior.

 _"Are you asking me to undress, Tris?" She laughed._

 _"Only partially."_

The day I showed her my tattoo. I was nervous about showing her it, I didn't want her thinking that I may be crazy, I mean who else would put all of the factions on their back? But she didn't, she marveled at it, showing her Erudite curiosity, asking what it all meant. I told her of course, it was also a warning.

 _"I continually struggle with kindness."_

 _"No one's perfect."_

She right, because I'm far from it. I know I have hurt her in more ways then one. It terrifies me to the point of emptying all of my stomach contents just at the thought. Yet I continue on. I'm protecting her though, aren't I? Trying to show her that she's more than just some adrenaline junkie Dauntless. This is for her own good.

I stop short, Marcus used to tell me the same thing. Memory after memory creeps into my mind. Marcus standing over top of me, with a belt in his hand and rage in his eyes, and me, leaning against the desk in my room with tears that I would never dare shed, never would give him that satisfaction that he broke me…is that what I'm doing to Tris?

Tris, her eyes an unbreakable force, the pigment like storm clouds in a hurricane. Her head held high with her stubborn chin. Tris, the one who would never back down from a fight, no matter if it costs her life. Tris…the selfless girl from Abnegation that I fell in love with…I don't deserve her, I never will deserve her.

I always sympathized with Tris's fear, her fear of lack of control, but I never really could understand it until my last fear.

Becoming my abusive father was only my third fear, my fourth one is something that I wish I would have never seen.

It wasn't until that moment that I realized that I can never be in control.

Tris dying, over and over and _over_. Being choked and then pushed off of a train by Peter. Jeanine, injecting serum after serum until it drove Tris mad to the point of suicide. The Dauntless, running into Erudite, guns blazing, Tris having nothing but a pocket knife to protect herself, getting shot by a traitor Dauntless. Those deaths were all mind shattering, but of course the worst is last. Me, standing over top of her, Tris cradling our newborn. Her in grey instead of black, with the dull grey walls surrounding us. The simulation me, with his belt raised up in the air.

 _"This is for your own good Tris."_

Raising the belt up and down, the whooshing of it being raised up, the snap of the leather hitting human flesh, the wounded cry of someone who loves you but has no idea why you would hurt them this way. Those sounds were all I could process, until I heard a staggering breath, _her_ last breath.

I lost it.

I ran up and finally killed simulation me with a snap to the neck, only to hold Tris's beaten and mangled body in my arms.

I can still feel her blood that seeped through my shirt, although it isn't there.

 _All you have is your fire...And the place you need to reach  
Don't you ever tame your demons, but always keep 'em on a leash_

I'm too selfish to let her go. Too selfish even though I know I should.

 _When I was a man I thought it ended. When I knew love's perfect ache  
But my peace has always depended. On all the ashes in my wake_

 _You're nothing like him Tobias. You care, and you love, and that's more than you can ever say about_ him.

I'm not sure when my conscious became Tris's voice, but it's not a bad thing to have. But now, I can't agree with her. I am like him, I became the monster I always said I wouldn't.

 _Tobias…you could never hurt me. You never would, and besides, I'm not scared of you._

I can hear her trickling laugh fade away in my head.

I need to go back to her. I need to feel her soft lips brush against mine, I need to tell her how much I love her. How I hate it when we fight. I need to hold her close and never let her go.

I'll never forget my past, but I won't let it control me. I will be a better man to her. Four is dead, and a new me has risen out of the ashes.

 _All you have is your fire...And the place you need to reach  
Don't you ever tame your demons, but always keep 'em on a leash_


End file.
